It's really nice that folks with a new product or service like to bring stuff to our attention. In the spirit of being forthright, we'd advise you that you should have a fairly complete/polished product before doing so. Luddites like us (well, specifically this writer) aren't in much of a position to speculate on how cool something .

Case in point, a representative of Menuism, a newish Web site that aims to let you "rate what you ate and find great food with personal recommendations," alerted us to the venture's existence. Unfortunately, we came away unimpressed.

Menuism seems to be attempting to bridge the gap between social networking and group opinion sites, a.k.a., "Yelp meets MySpace." There are some interesting features: you can designate friends and track their culinary experiences. You can earn points through participating and can "spend" them for various purposes. You can post photos of what you eat. You can set up a "to try" list to help keep track of places you intend to go. And, not only can you only rate restaurants, you can rate individual dishes.

Okay -- rating by DISH? We're all about "digging deep," but that's taking it a little too far; in our opinion, that's what the review section is for.

Some of the features we mentioned may have potential once the technical bugs are ironed out. There are floating pop-ups that can't be fully seen because they are partially blocked by pull-down menus. There are some weird layouts on the photos screen. Some of the general interface is non-intuitive.

But more than those bugs, all this button mashing and categorizing when talking about restaurants seems to turn something we love -- talking about food -- into something overly clinical.

After the jump: more critiques and we throw stones from within our glass house

will be